Competitors of Karma

The Content and Correlates of Belief in Karma Across Cultures

“…The doctrine of Karma, shared by these traditions, integrates belief in reincarnation with the belief that people’s actions—good or bad—lead to valence-congruent outcomes at a later point in time, with the implication that individuals eventually get what they deserve. Within this Karmic belief system, the connection between moralized actions and Karmic consequences is often causally opaque and may manifest across supernaturally-long timescales, such as when individuals’ health, economic outcomes, or morphology (e.g., gender, animal form) is determined by their prosocial or antisocial behavior in previous lifetimes (Bronkhorst, 2011; Obeyesekere, 2002).…”

“…And Karma differs from most other supernatural forces (e.g., God) by its putative lack of agentic form and its highly circumscribed domain of operation. Karma lacks any role in nonmoral affairs, does not demand devotion, and in many religious traditions Karma is believed to operate independently—or in the absence—of gods (Bronkhorst, 2011; Hieber, 1983). In addition, belief in Karma does not require adherence to a Karmic religious tradition (as indicated by the willingness of many agnostic Westerners to attribute outcomes to Karma), nor is a strong belief in Karma necessarily present for all adherents to Karmic religions (e.g., who may focus instead on the social, ritual, or devotional theistic aspects of their religion; Fuller, 2004).…”

Karma and God: Convergent and divergent mental representations of supernatural norm enforcement

“…In contrast, karma was rarely ascribed supernatural powers or social roles, and was much more often described through non-agentic causal processes (e.g., balance, cycles) especially in moral contexts (e.g., do good things and get good outcomes, payback for bad deeds, see Willard et al, 2020, for a similar description of karma among participants from Singapore). Personality traits, actions, and thoughts were also listed at moderate rates by all groups describing karma, and actions were especially common among Hindus and Buddhists (consistent with a longer cultural history of perceiving karma as part of the general causal structure of the universe, not restricted to moral actions per se, Bronkhorst, 2011;Fuller, 2004;Kyabgon, 2015;Obeyesekere, 2002). These descriptions of karma might indicate that believers are, at times, willing so think about karma as a social agent, similar to how god believers describe God.…”

“…Study 1 explores the general patterns of beliefs, and Study 2 provides a confirmatory preregistered test of focal hypotheses derived from Study 1. These samples test the replicability and generalizability of our key findings across both contexts where karma is longentrenched in dominant cultural narratives-Indian, Hindu, and Buddhist samples-and contexts where karma is more novel and not a part of one's religious affiliation-a general sample of Americans (mostly White and from Christian and Non-religious families) who claim to believe in karma (Bronkhorst, 2011;.…”

“…It is less evident that believers think about karma as a social agent. Karma is often depicted as a law-like cause-and-effect principle (i.e., actions lead to morally-congruent outcomes without the mediation of natural or supernatural agents) or according to a resource-like metric (i.e., actions generate merit or demerit that is accumulated, quantified, and exchanged for particular experiences, Bronkhorst, 2011;Daniel, 1983). For example, in one study of Buddhist, Taoist, Christian and non-religious individuals in Singapore, karma was typically described in open-ended responses as the consequences of actions, like the Golden Rule, or, to a lesser extent, as rewards, punishments, and actions -with participants rarely, if ever, mentioning divine intervention, indicating that karma is perceived as distinct from moralizing gods (Willard et al, 2020).…”